We are thrilled to announce the second round of funding of the Digital News Initiative Innovation Fund, Google’s €150m commitment to spark new thinking and give European news organisations of all sizes the space to try some new things, experiment and innovate in the digital space. Today, project leaders are being notified of funding offers that total €24 million to 124 projects originating from 25 European countries.

Google continues to make nice with European publishers, part two: The search giant announced Thursday it is supporting 124 new media projects across 25 European countries with €24 million as part of its Digital News Initiative Innovation Fund. Google intends to dole out €150 million over three years, and has already spread €27 million across 128 projects back in February (wewrote abouta numberof them).

Facebook’s fake news problem is all the rage these days. After raising hell about Facebook’s role in the recent election — and a misleading response from CEO Mark Zuckerberg — we’re really back at square one. It’s a problem, we all know it’s a problem (save Zuckerberg), and at this point we’re still struggling for a solution — although we do have some suggestions. According to The Washington Post, four students — Anant Goel, Nabinta De, Qinglin Chen, and Mark Craft — may have solved the problem. At a hackathon at Princeton University this week, students were given the challenge of solving…

For all its talk of a more connected world, Facebook has a tendency to silo us—its users—into feedback loops, those spheres of information where we’re rarely subjected to views that differ from our own.

Ever since the end of the presidential election, the spread of rumors, misinformation and outright fake news on social media has been in the spotlight. With even President Obama speaking out about social media’s role in pushing propaganda, and some

Zuckerberg says that he doesn’t want fake news on Facebook, but it turns out that getting rid of it is very difficult because “identifying the ‘truth’ is complicated”. Philosophers worldwide will agree with that proposition. But you don’t need to have a Nobel prize to check whether the pope did indeed endorse Trump or whether Clinton conducted the supposed purchases of arms or a Maldives house.

As the election season came to an end the fake news sources were just getting started. During the final three months of the US Presidential campaign, viral fake news sites crushed the real thing in terms of Facebook engagement. According to reporting from BuzzFeed News, the 20 top-performing fake election stories — those coming from hoax sites and hyperpartisan blogs — generated more than 8.7-million engagements.

After serious anxieties that fake news proliferated on social media unchecked during the election cycle, internet titans have stepped up, with Google and Facebook both blocking ad money from going to hoax story sites. But to protect the people,

In the wake of Donald Trump’s election as president, Facebook has taken justifiable heat for its role in spreading misinformation and propaganda about the candidates. In particular, its news feed algorithm fueled a cottage industry of fake and intentionally misleading “news” that skewed heavily anti–Hillary Clinton and pro-Trump, according to a BuzzFeed analysis. These falsehoods attracted far more user engagement, on average, than true stories from the same outlets and drowned out earnest attempts by dedicated fact-checking sites such as Snopes to debunk them

Also in the running was “coulrophobia,” the fear of clowns, and “hygge,” a Danish concept meaning “a quality of cosiness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being.” From The Guardian: